logo image
  • News
    • People Moves
    • Deal Wins
    • Demand Drivers
    • M&A and Funding
    • Financial Results
    • Technology
    • Academia
    • Industry News
    • Features
    • Machine Translation
    • — Divider —
    • Slator Pro
    • — Divider —
    • Press Releases
    • Sponsored Content
  • Data & Research
    • Research Reports & Pro Guides
    • Language Industry Investor Map
    • Real-Time Charts of Listed LSPs
    • Language Service Provider Index
  • Podcasts & Videos
  • Events
    • Design Thinking – February 2021
    • — Divider —
    • SlatorCon Coverage
    • Other Events
  • Directory
  • RFP Center
  • Jobs
MENU
  • News
    • People Moves
    • Deal Wins
    • Demand Drivers
    • M&A and Funding
    • Financial Results
    • Technology
    • Academia
    • Industry News
    • Features
    • Machine Translation
    • — Divider —
    • Slator Pro
    • — Divider —
    • Press Releases
    • Sponsored Content
  • Data & Research
    • Research Reports & Pro Guides
    • Language Industry Investor Map
    • Real-Time Charts of Listed LSPs
    • Language Service Provider Index
  • Podcasts & Videos
  • Events
    • Design Thinking – February 2021
    • — Divider —
    • SlatorCon Coverage
    • Other Events
  • Directory
  • RFP Center
  • Jobs

Advertise on Slator! Download the 2021 Online Media Kit Now

  • Slator Market Intelligence
  • Slator Advertising Services
  • Slator Advisory
  • Login
Search
Generic filters
Exact matches only
Advertisement
Multilingual Chatbots: The Conversation Has Yet to Get Longer

2 years ago

July 9, 2019

Multilingual Chatbots: The Conversation Has Yet to Get Longer

Technology ·

by Vijayalaxmi Hegde

On July 9, 2019

2 years ago
Technology ·

by Vijayalaxmi Hegde

On July 9, 2019

Multilingual Chatbots: The Conversation Has Yet to Get Longer

Sales is about conversation. Chatbots bring this age-old element of commerce to the online world. Multilingual chatbots make on-demand information accessible to a company’s global customers, creating value in marketing as well as customer support.

Gartner forecasts that 25% of customer support and services will be integrated with virtual assistants by 2020. While no figures are available on how multilingual the bot population is, some locations are more inclined to use chatbots than others. European consumers are more receptive to chatbots than those in the US: 50% of French consumers hold a positive opinion on bots as opposed to only 32% of Americans.

Currently, chatbots are mostly used in the leading languages of global ecommerce: English, FIGS (French, Italian, German, and Spanish), Portuguese, Arabic, Russian, Chinese, and Dutch. They have also made steady inroads into long-tail languages from India and Africa to support the regions’ emerging e-commerce industry.

Advertisement

Not all chatbots are born equal. While some are purely menu- or button-based and pose the least challenge, localization-wise, chatbots that are keyword- and context-based aim to provide a more fulfilling user experience. Hence, the latter need to have better language skills.

Slator 2020 Language Industry Market Report

Data and Research, Slator reports
55 pages. Total market size, biz dev and sales insights, TMS & MT review, buyer segment analysis, M&A, Covid impact & outlook.
$480 BUY NOW

Menu/button-based chatbots are pre-loaded with canned responses. They are good enough in short conversations, but have limited capability to respond to questions with more variables or long-tail questions.

Keyword-based chatbots essentially dip into a knowledge base to respond to queries from the user after they “listen” to specific keywords that users type in. They make use of previously translated data from the knowledge base. However, when queries become more nuanced or similar keywords are used, keyword-based virtual assistants can get confused. 

Smarter Does Not Mean Easier

Chatbots that remember, try to understand meaning, and then respond appropriately need to have better language skills than their humbler peers. People believe that anything they talk to must necessarily have human-like capabilities in language, thus, expectations can be high.

There are also the challenges brought on by people using multiple languages in the same chat or transliterating into another language. For example, in India, it would be common to have users typing out Hindi queries in English. In Africa, people may mix English and Swahili in Kenya or French and Arabic in Algeria.

SlatorSweep - Daily Market Intelligence

SlatorSweep

Data and Research, Market Intelligence
Curated news from thousands of sources, SlatorSweep’s daily news service gives you a competitive edge on time sensitive market intelligence.
BUY NOW

Plugging into a machine translation API can go some way by virtue of keyword detection, but may not be ready to work with live customers at scale. Even when the likes of Facebook have bots that could easily detect language given all the information in the user’s profile, it is still not enough for a fluent user experience.

Conversational user interfaces (or CUIs) — which is essentially what a chatbot is — need to be supported by systems powered by natural language processing and machine learning. Language designers (a new job description) are required to aid this learning, manage terminology, and adapt the script to new locales.

Designing virtual assistants to conduct a human-like conversation is a tall order and requires a different set of skills than those supplied by developers; it needs the creativity of poets. And when the chatbot goes international, it is required to be similarly steered through various languages by transcreators, who combine the expertise of copywriters and translators. Additionally, domain-specific fine-tuning would require collaboration with subject matter experts.

Slator 2019 Neural Machine Translation Report: Deploying NMT in Operations

Data and Research
32 pages, NMT state-of-the-art, 5 case studies, 30 commentaries, NMT in day-to-day operations
$85 BUY NOW

The technology is still relatively new and chatbots may currently be best suited to filling in the gap before the handoff to human agents. Even at this stage, chatbots are expected to bring in cost savings of USD 11bn in the retail, banking, and healthcare sectors.

However, with advances in artificial intelligence, human-machine interactions are expected to become more commonplace, not just more efficient. And longer conversations may develop. Humans and machines are currently working on that.

TAGS

conversational user interfaceGoogle Translatelanguage designerlong-tail languagemachine learningMicrosoft Translatormultilingual chatbotnatural language processingNLPpolyglot virtual assistanttranscreation
SHARE
Vijayalaxmi Hegde

By Vijayalaxmi Hegde

Staff writer. Brings a journalistic approach to writing for the translation and localization industry. Zero waste practitioner. Lives in Sirsi in southwestern India.

Advertisement

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SLATOR WEEKLY

Language Industry Intelligence
In Your Inbox. Every Friday

SUBSCRIBE

SlatorSweepSlatorPro
ResearchRFP CENTER

PUBLISH

PRESS RELEASEDIRECTORY LISTING
JOB ADEVENT LISTING

Bespoke advisory including speaking, briefings and M&A

SLATOR ADVISORY
Advertisement

Featured Reports

See all
Slator 2020 Language Industry M&A and Funding Report

Slator 2020 Language Industry M&A and Funding Report

by Slator

Slator 2021 Data-for-AI Market Report

Slator 2021 Data-for-AI Market Report

by Slator

Slator 2020 Medtech Translation and Localization Report

Slator 2020 Medtech Translation and Localization Report

by Slator

Pro Guide: Sales and Marketing for Language Service Providers

Pro Guide: Sales and Marketing for Language Service Providers

by Slator

Press Releases

See all
Donna Thomas Joins Visual Data Media Services as Senior Vice President of Sales, Americas

Donna Thomas Joins Visual Data Media Services as Senior Vice President of Sales, Americas

by Visual Data Media Services

iDISC Awarded ISO 27001 Information Security Management Certification

iDISC Awarded ISO 27001 Information Security Management Certification

by iDISC

XTRF Launches a Bi-Monthly Free Networking Event for Localization Professionals

XTRF Launches a Bi-Monthly Free Networking Event for Localization Professionals

by XTRF

Upcoming Events

See All
  1. Memsource MT Post-Editing Pricing Models Webinar

    Pricing Models for MT Post-Editing Workshop

    by Memsource

    · February 3

    Hear a panel of innovative localization professionals share different approaches for MT post-editing pricing.

    More info FREE

Featured Companies

See all
Text United

Text United

Memsource

Memsource

Wordbank

Wordbank

Protranslating

Protranslating

Seprotec

Seprotec

Versacom

Versacom

SDL

SDL

Smartling

Smartling

Lingotek

Lingotek

XTM International

XTM International

Smartcat

Smartcat

Translators without Borders

Translators without Borders

STAR Group

STAR Group

memoQ Translation Technologies

memoQ Translation Technologies

Advertisement

Popular articles

Why Netflix Shut Down Its Translation Portal Hermes

Why Netflix Shut Down Its Translation Portal Hermes

by Esther Bond

The Slator 2020 Language Service Provider Index

The Slator 2020 Language Service Provider Index

by Slator

Top Language Industry Quotes of 2020

Top Language Industry Quotes of 2020

by Monica Jamieson

SlatorPod: The Weekly Language Industry Podcast

connect with us

footer logo

Slator makes business sense of the language services and technology market.

Our Company

  • Support
  • About us
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy

Subscribe to the Slator Weekly

Language Industry Intelligence
In Your Inbox. Every Friday

© 2021 Slator. All rights reserved.

Sign up to the Slator Weekly

Join over 13,000 subscribers and get the latest language industry intelligence every Friday

Your information will never be shared with third parties. No Spam.